Blog
Looking for something specific?
Another Chance to Save Our Democracy
This week’s election results have given us a golden opportunity to save our democracy. We must hold this administration accountable and halt the tools that it uses to harm us, from ICE funding to a permitting bill that will make it easier for the administration to build what it wants in our backyards.
A New Kind of No Kings Day
On October 17th, people across the country came together to defend democracy by encouraging voter education and participation. The fourth No Kings Day marked a shift in strategy and priorities, both in Massachusetts and nationwide. But that shift didn’t mean abandoning the spirit of the original No Kings events. Instead, we aimed to transition that power to each individual person as we once again affirmed that America has no kings!
Heartbeat of America
Elections are the beating heart of a republic. Every two years a brief window into the operations of the democratic system are left exposed to be tinkered with and updated by the people. The first votes have already been cast in this grand contest. The lumbering and wonderful machine of American Democracy is stirring to life again.
Background Resistance: Impacts of Dissent Beyond the Front Lines
Last spring, when the second Trump administration was still new, I shuffled nervously into a friend’s home late at night. My arms were full of snacks intended to share with strangers, and I was unsure what to expect. People from the neighborhood showed up one by one, all bearing copious amounts of food, none seemingly hungry. As the trays and boxes loaded with a variety of treats became ever more precariously placed on shrinking table space, we sat in a circle and, one by one, explained who we were and why we were there. Our neighborhood at the time was plastered with Trump’s name, Trump’s face, and the paranoia-fueled hatred of the “Other.”
Citizen’s Resistance
Just as a great loaf of bread requires the right ingredients to rise, a winning civil resistance campaign needs three essentials to rise up: a compelling vision, broad community engagement, and a spark for action.The De-ICE Citizens Bank campaign had all these ingredients, which is why it succeeded in forcing Citizens Bank to stop financing prison company giants, CoreCivic and GEO Group, operating dozens of detention centers for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A Reluctant Activist
In recent weeks, you have heard from conservatives explaining why they became involved in our movement. Another author has chronicled their history with left-wing activism. This week, I want to tell you my story of becoming politically active, coming from the 91% of Americans whose political engagement stops at reading the news and voting once a year.
A Cycle Considered
I grew up in a conservative household. I enrolled as a Republican as soon as I turned 18, and voted for George W. Bush that year. Then 9/11 happened, and the way our country’s leadership responded set off red flags in my mind. I had long been slow to trust authority figures, and I found myself drifting further and further apart ideologically from my family, church, and party. I watched as the GOP sold itself out, eagerly, to a rightward drift; a movement adding more and more authoritarianism, I would dare even say fascism, into the party. It took until I had some distance, when I was out of the party and looking over it with a wider lens, to learn that the process I’d seen happening up close had begun years before I had my voter registration, maybe even before I was born.
Seven Days in D.C.
In the week leading up to the United States Semiquincentennial, thousands of people participated in Seven Days in DC, a weeklong series of civic engagement activities, public demonstrations, and cultural events designed to encourage direct participation in the democratic process. This was a massive undertaking organized by dozens of organizations and individuals and Mass 50501 was proud to head to D.C. and spend the holiday week fighting for our country.
Our Declaration
250 years ago, our predecessors submitted a list of grievances towards a tyrannical ruler, and declared their independence. What would our declaration look like today?
Level Up Your Resistance: Throw a Block Party
Particularly in our steely New Englander culture where we’re encouraged to mind our own business, community connections won’t happen naturally if you don’t do the work of fostering them. So, how do you actually do it?
Mayday, America
To participate in May Day Strong is simple: No School. No Work. No Shopping. This is a required step in our development as a movement. It will demonstrate to those still on the sidelines that we have staying power and the capacity to escalate. It will show to our political adversaries that we have the ability to apply pressure on a national scale at a specific time in a coordinated way to effect. It is a warning to capitulators that we have leverage in the consumerist system that they have built and that we are smart enough to exploit that vulnerability.
The Case for Helping Your Neighbors
Giving our time and resources to others may seem like the last thing that we want to do in a society that does its best to make us all feel precarious and alone. However, we have the power to help each other to make us all less precarious, less alone, and more able to unite in working towards a better world for everyone.
Pathways to Power
We have succeeded already at the first step in the long march that will be required to achieve victory against American Fascism. Our sacrifice was worth it—because in one week's time, the largest protest in the history of America will have been planned, executed, and launched by ordinary citizens from all walks of life. We use that energy over the spring, summer, and fall to grow this movement to legendary proportions, to ensure democracy survives the midterm elections, and to assert our collective will to ensure a better future for all of us.
A Case for Zeal
The United States, without the remit or even notice to Congress and the American People, has unilaterally, and at the whim of a single man and a small cabal of conspirators, sunk the fleet of a sovereign nation, assassinated its leader, and devastated the Iranian command structure. Thousands are dead in the attack including hundreds at a girls’ school, hit with a Tomahawk missile in Tehran. This attack has no more the legality, morality, or strategy of a mob boss ordering a hit on a rival.
365 Days of Resistance
On February 5, 2025, Mass 50501 was born (although in spirit only, not yet in name). The first event was not officially organized. People simply heard the national call for action and felt compelled to do something—anything—locally. Residents marched from the Boston Common to the JFK Federal Building to stand in opposition to the Trump regime along with every single other state as part of a nationwide mobilization: “50 states, 50 protests, 1 day.”
The Patriots and The Nationalists
Throughout American history, power has cycled between two groups: nationalists who believe that certain racial, religious, or other groups are superior to some others, and patriots who believe that America is only great when equal access to our founding ideals is ensured. Today, the differences between the two camps are on full display…
Remove: Not Just a Coalition—a Duty
Somewhere in Minneapolis a young girl is writing in her diary. Somewhere in that city by the harsh digital light of a computer screen rather than that of a candle, she is writing a tale of her sorrow. She has someone in her family who is undocumented or she is herself. She sees her friends laughing without her and she is forgotten.
What We Are Thankful For
This holiday season, we at Mass 50501 asked our volunteers to share what they’re thankful for and what our movement means to them. Click through below to see what they had to say.
Democracy Means Talking To Each Other
The United States is a democracy. In a democracy, the people rule. What does a democracy require of its citizens? Specifically, if democracy is run by people in the collective sense, what does that require of us as individuals?
The Most Powerful Idea
The bold proposition was that through debate, introspection, revision, and testing of ideas against a voting public with conflicting interests, it was possible to produce better leaders, better economies, and better nations. Our country’s creation was dubbed the American Experiment because most people, including some of the Founders, had doubts that a people governing themselves could be done. America was a product of the Enlightenment.